A Heaviness That's Gone
by Mourning Ophelia
Summary: Kurosaki Isshin watches his son live out his destiny with the help of a little shinigami girl.  IchiRuki oneshot


**Title: **A Heaviness that's Gone  
**Author: **Lexa

**Theme: **Tempest  
**Rating:** M for a little gore and a few naughty words  
**Length: **4,414 words  
**Summary: **Kurosaki Isshin watches his son live out his destiny with the help of a little shinigami girl.

Disclaimer: Bleach © Kubo Tite and all that jazz.

Author's Note: This was my contest entry for the IchiRuki community on Livejournal. The theme was "Tempest," which immediately sent my little brain into a tailspin of Shakespeare and plot bunnies. All you really need to know is that Isshin takes on the role of Prospero in this… and hopefully that'll be enough! I find Isshin an incredibly difficult character to write, mainly because we know so little about him. I've taken quite a few liberties in developing his backstory, so some of the events might conflict a little with cannon even though I've tried to align it the best I could. The most major of these is that he tells Kon he has only known about Ichigo's activities since Ichigo's fight with Grand Fisher. I decided to start it earlier because, after all, this is an IchiRuki story. And with those two, you need to start at the beginning. Spoilers for the Hueco Mundo arc, so be warned!

I.

The very first time he feels her in his home, he is surprised to find only a small spark of anger inside of him, flicking feebly as he lies prone on the floor. It is more surprise than anything else, like seeing an old acquaintance walking down the street toward you and being powerless to change your path in time.

But then he is frustrated, and raging, and upset all at once. It swells up to a firestorm that completely enflames his heart. There was once a time that he could rise up from this, and there was once a time that he could sense a hollow halfway across the city, meeting it blow for blow until he found his satisfaction in the crack of a hollow mask. 

Now he clenches his fists vainly against the floor. The hollow came upon him and Yuzu so quickly. He hadn't smelt it, heard it, seen it, or felt it. It was there, crashing through the wall, ripping through him and knocking Yuzu away, before he could even breathe.

How is it, then, that he can trace the weightless fluttering of that small black butterfly through the curtains of his son's windows? It should have been a warning. No shinigami had ever dared to intrude before.

There is something missing in this body, like half of his heart has been cut out of him, or bound so tightly that it can no longer beat against his ribcage. The emptiness is worse than the pain. One hundred and twenty years, he thinks, and only now am I ready to be free again.

His sword, his power, his soul began to beat against their container for the first time since Masaki's death. A little more. He just needs a little more...

Where is Yuzu? Where is Karin? The hollow is the only thing he sees.

He tries to push himself up, feeding off this anger. He collapses just in time to hear the yells of his son, stumbling down the stair case in a blind panic.

"Dad! DAD!"

Ichigo, his son--Masaki's son--who was never supposed to see ghosts or find out about the world of the living dead. Ichigo runs straight for the hollow, as he knew he would. There is no small amount of pride in him, but there is also no small amount of terror, either.

And so Kurosaki Isshin begins to crawl. The hollow has destroyed a perfectly good wall of his clinic and that just adds to it all. His heart and power are pulsing together in time. The night is about to swallow his children.

"Don't hollows attack people to eat their souls?!" he hears Ichigo yell. "Then what did it attack my family for?!"

Isshin sees her now, a head of raven hair, topping a body so lithe it could have actually been a butterfly. For a moment his heart burns--actually burns--to see the familiar black of the uniform. To see a sheath and a whole, unbroken sword. How is it possible that, in such a short amount of time, she could have explained so much and that Ichigo could have understood so perfectly?

"...hollows wander searching for souls with high spiritual concentration..." The girl's voice is deeper, colder than he might have imagined. "For that, random humans are sometimes attacked..." He wonders if he knew her in another life.

"What do you mean?" Ichigo asks, but Isshin can tell that his son is already piecing things together.

"I..." she begins uncertainly, "I have never seen or heard of a human who can see shinigami and defeat kidou on their own..."

Isshin knows what is coming next.

"… or a human with such high spiritual concentration..."

Isshin stands slowly, clutching at the broken wall for support.

"Which means," she finishes, "his target is… you."

His son tenses, the shock of realization paralyzes him. And the little shinigami girl is swatted away by the hollow so easily. Just a rookie. But Ichigo doesn't flinch or back down in his anger. He brings it back to his scowl, that scoffing nonchalance that Masaki would have hated, but makes Isshin so incredibly proud.

"Hey…" Ichigo says to the hollow, "You want my soul, right?"

Masaki once said that all of his children inherited something from him, but it's not until now—now that Isshin can actually feel the power pulsing and throbbing around his son—that he's afraid that Ichigo has inherited the worst.

"THEN FIGHT ME!" Ichigo yells. "FACE TO FACE! NO ONE ELSE HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THIS—SO COME ON! TRY TO EAT MY SOUL!"

His son would sacrifice everything for his family, but the shinigami girl would sacrifice everything for complete strangers. Isshin watches her blood spray up into the air with a look of identical horror to his son. She doesn't swing her sword or fire off a kidou spell like the shinigami he used to know. She doesn't even say a word. Her body is so small, the hollow's mouth could have swallowed her whole.

"SHINIGAMI!" Ichigo yells, as if that is her name.

They're speaking too softly for him now and at too far a distance. As he watches them, something strange begins to happen in the way that they talk to each other and the way that their bodies speak for them. There is a sudden friendship—no, maybe that was too strong of a word. There is _something_. Something that seems to draw the clouds above them together, and that shakes the ground beneath their feet. It's as if the sky and the earth are aligning to see this through. They are no longer in control of their own destinies.

"It's not shinigami," the girl says. Isshin can barely hear her over the growling of the hollow. "It's Kuchiki Rukia."

Something inside of him wants to scream.

"… I'm Kurosaki Ichigo…"

The shinigami girl holds out her zanpakutou, and it takes his son less than a second to decide. There never was a choice for him, and Isshin sees that now. He hopes, watching the blade slice clear through his son's chest that his son, his only son, will forgive him for the legacy of strife he is about to inherit. Ichigo will be a natural, and he will suffer for it every day.

Isshin can see how this will play out, as if all the lines are before him, simply waiting to be read.

II.

He is starting to like this Kuchiki Rukia.

She has a lot of spirit, that's for sure—and she's impossibly fast on her feet. Isshin has tried to make a game of catching her on her way to the bathroom, but she disappears into the shadows as if she belongs there. Not even Ichigo, who, admittedly, has blocked and evaded several good morning calls from Daddy, has that kind of agility. He honestly believes that he nearly had her the night before as she came out of the bathroom; his fingertips skimmed the familiar yellow Yuzu's pajamas for a fraction of a heartbeat before she flashed away.

It's not his imagination. He is getting stronger, and it won't be long before he is back.

But for now, he is hidden behind the lines of trees, watching Ichigo's fight to remain standing. There's a gaping wound on his chest and the expression in his eyes is fiercer than the downpour coming down around him. It always seems to rain on the anniversary, only this year it is also raining blood.

He had followed Ichigo's body as it disappeared from the steps of the shrine. As he came closer, he could feel the tempestuous pulse of power that Ichigo let off.

This is the first time he sees the girl's face. She looks like a Kuchiki, is his first thought, though he knows that she's nothing like them. He knows, because she is trying to scream some sense back into Ichigo, and Isshin wonders how it's possible for her to know him so well already.

Ichigo collapses onto her, and she struggles only for a moment with his weight. It's a strange sort of parody in a way, because she's been carrying him all along. She, not Isshin, has taught Ichigo to fight. Isshin has half-heartedly encouraged his son to practice karate, has tried to work on his reflexes and blocks, but it's nothing compared to this. She has supported him, and yelled at him, and changed his world. She's given him a purpose.

"For being able to survive… Ichigo… _thank you_," she breathes out in a small choke.

None of this makes sense to Isshin. She is supposed to find a way to take back her powers. She is supposed to return to Soul Society, and to forget about Ichigo. Every part of Isshin's being screams for her powers to return because he knows, as surely she must, that Soul Society will come.

Whether they come for her or his son rests solely on the small shoulders of Kuchiki Rukia.

Maybe it all makes perfect sense, then. Why she stays with him and slowly draws his real self out again, and why he fights in her stead and fits her into his world…

They don't have any idea what they've done for one another, Isshin thinks. Just a buncha kids.

She holds Ichigo's head in her lap, talking to him and Not-Ichigo-Ichigo quietly. And who is this girl that can hold him like this? Who is willing to reach out and stay by his side, though she can sense that there's something not quite right about him?

There are so many things he could tell Ichigo as they stand together in front of Masaki's grave. He could tell him how he rose in the heavens and fell back onto the earth. He could tell him how Masaki never believed he was the monster he thought of himself as. He could tell his son how much he will need that little shinigami girl.

She knows, he thinks. _She knows_.

But she stays anyway.

III.

Kisuke sends him a note that has four words: _May I train him? _

It strikes him as funny, flattering, too, that Kisuke thinks he has that kind of control over Ichigo. Rukia is gone now, that much is clear. He has seen the note she left himself and a small part of him recognized the spiritual energy that flooded the city that night. He thinks she's tremendous, but also very foolish. Ichigo has every reason to go after her, just as she had all the right reasons to try to leave him behind.

Ichigo does not know what to do. He comes home from Kisuke's shop and acts as if nothing has happened, as if he has not lost a valuable piece of his self. But Isshin's desk is right below the air vent in Ichigo's room, and he knows better. He chose that spot in the clinic after Masaki had died and Ichigo's nightmares began. Now those nightmares are back, but Ichigo—his stubborn, loyal, brave, completely love-stupid boy--can not figure out why. In those days, all Isshin had to do was walk up the stairs and sit with him until he returned to sleep, stroking his hair or telling him one of Daddy's "make believe" adventures about fighting monsters.

He slides his fingers across his desk, remembering how soft his son's hair was to the touch. Ichigo doesn't let anyone touch him anymore.

No. That wasn't true. Rukia touched him. She kicked him, carried him, held onto him, touched his arm gently. Every touch with a different meaning and a different purpose. Not even Tatsuki could without earning a scowl. 

Isshin walks up the stairs without turning on any lights and goes into his son's room. There's a small sliver of the moon shining through the open window, creating a path. Not-Ichigo-Ichigo is sleeping in Ichigo's bed, and the closet door is tightly shut, as if to pretend that no one had been there at all. Isshin stands in the darkness.

He knows that Not-Ichigo-Ichigo isn't his son; his presence is too light. But Isshin decides to pretend, too. He leans over his son's body and tries to imagine it covered by the snarling, disfigured mask of a hollow.

This is the exact nightmare he had the week before Ichigo was born. Every dark and hurtful emotion he had borne in his long afterlife molded into the shape of a newborn boy.

If Ichigo knew what the cost was, he wonders, would he still agree to go?

In Soul Society he studied the darker nature of the soul. Kisuke had once asked him, "How can you expect to understand your enemy, if you can't see yourself in it?" and they had learned together. They had also gone too far. When you meddle and provoke the darkness in your heart, you enjoy the slow churn of power as it courses through your veins and into your sword. But the darkness begins to speak back, and it has a face, and then a name, and then it becomes you.

He's felt that darkness in Ichigo, but he doesn't want to dig deeply enough to find out if it is the same as his.

Only Masaki could break his mask. She was special and saw him, just as Ichigo saw Rukia. Maybe that's what scares him so much about this. He knows what he was willing to do for Masaki, and has no doubt in his heart that Ichigo would do all of it and more for Rukia.

He feels for her, because he knows what it is like to stand before those demi-gods and lose everything. But he doesn't want to lose his son quite yet. He wants him to stay Ichigo, the fifteen-almost-sixteen year-old brooding boy, who stays up all night trying to decipher Shakespeare. Who sees ghosts, but does not know where they go when they finally pass on. He wants to be able to sit down with his family at the table, see his son laugh with his daughters, and be happy.

But it's not his choice, and he's starting to think that it's not Ichigo's, either. These kids have brought together life and death and connected them in a bond that would not be broken. Nothing will ever be the same again.

He smiles, trying to picture the look on the Gotei 13's faces when a mere teenager breaks in and shatters everything. How fitting, he thinks with a dry laugh, that it should be my boy. And it's not that Isshin wants to go back himself, not anymore at least, but every now and again he wonders if Soul Society's sky is still a blue so bright, it can set your soul on fire.

He writes back: _Just don't tell him. _

IV.

Ichigo comes back alone. He slips back into his body and comes down for dinner.

He walks a little taller and he looks stronger than Isshin remembers. Even Yuzu comments on it as they wash their dishes that night.

"Daddy," she says. "Doesn't Ichi-nii look so grown up to you?"

He puts on a brave smile. "Don't you and Karin grow up on Daddy too soon! How could I live without my beautiful girls?"

"How could you live without us serving your every need?" Karin asks dryly, pouring herself a glass of water.

"Still… he looked a bit sad," Yuzu continues. "Do you think he's upset that summer is over?"

Isshin thinks he's upset because his closet is still painfully empty, but they--especially Karin--already thinks he's insane enough.

"Maybe you could cheer him up by baking him some cookies?"

"You just want to steal them, old man!" Karin says. But Yuzu thinks it's a brilliant idea, and he's put her off Ichigo's trail for the time being.

He hears the full story from Yoruichi and processes it with a cup of sake. The black cat sits in front of him on his desk, and together they listen to Ichigo's nightmare. 

"Bankai, huh?" he laughs into his cup. "That's my boy."

"No one seemed to put together that you were his father," she says. "I was a little surprised."

"But why would they?" Isshin says. "He's too much like his mother."

"He's exactly like you," she said, whipping her tail around haphazardly. "You know it."

"Don't say that!" He slams his cup down. "My son is not a monster!"

"And you are?" Yoruichi in her feline way, completely levels him. "You are no more a monster than any man is. Everyone has that darkness inside of them; you and Ichigo just know how to tap into it."

"Then what, my friend, is the difference between a man and a monster?" he asks.

"A man can let that darkness go when he no longer needs it," she says. "Because he has something to love as well as protect."

Isshin twirls the empty cup around on his finger, trying to fight the smile on his face. He thinks on this for a moment.

"So… did my son put the moves on Rukia-chan?"

It was a truly strange sight to see a cat roll its eyes.

"She stayed behind," she says. "I was surprised he was mature enough to let her go."

"She'll be all right though, won't she?" Isshin asks after a moment. He misses their one-sided game of hide and seek, but most of all, he misses the son he has when she is around. He's more impressed with her now than ever.

"She'll be back."

"Good," Isshin says. "She'd better hurry up. Ichigo's not going to last much longer."

He knows the signs. Ichigo is afraid of himself now, but more afraid of what he might do. He has every reason to be.

"You noticed it too, then," Yoruichi says. "I can't even describe it, but those two…"

"Really shook things up," Isshin finishes. "Maybe it was time."

Her lips curl up in what he assumes is a smirk. "Maybe it was fate."

Rukia comes a few weeks later, for which he is very grateful. Someone needed to smack some sense back into his son, and he was afraid it would have to be him. He still is not quite ready.

Isshin puts her in the girls' room, though he seriously debates the merits of letting her sleep in Ichigo's room again. Given the fact his son can barely stand for the girl to sit on his bed, Isshin decides that smaller Daddy Nudges are in order. They sit together at dinner, and it's as if Ichigo can barely keep the smile off his face.

Rukia-chan hums happily as she helps Yuzu with the dishes, and Karin grudgingly agrees to go with them to the store to pick up ice cream. His dark-haired daughter is suspicious, but intrigued.

Isshin glances back at his beautiful Masaki, but he doesn't really smile until later that night, when he can hear Ichigo and Rukia quietly whispering together as he fills out order forms for the clinic.

Way to go, son, he thinks, because he does not know what is coming.

A few days later, Ichigo disappears and not even Rukia can find him.

V.

Isshin stands in the shadows, listening.

"Don't look at me like that," Rukia says in a low voice. He can see them through a slight crack in the door. "I would have found a way to come with you, no matter what."

"But why did we have to split up?" Ichigo sounds broken to him, somehow. For the first time since he arrived at Kisuke's shop, he wonders if they failed.

"Ichigo…" Always in the familiar. She moves to stand up, so small next to him.

"And you! When they… when they told me..." Ichigo can't even finish. 

"That was my fight, Ichigo, it was something that I had to do for myself," she says. "If you had interfered, I would have killed you myself."

"God dammit," Ichigo practically snarls. "You were fucking bleeding to death when we found you, Rukia!"

"And so was Sado!" she says hotly. "And Inoue, and Ishida and Renji were all hurt. Ichigo, you were practically dead, too! How do you think that made me feel?"

Ichigo takes a step back.

"You fought so many battles," she says. "And every time, I knew. I felt you coming closer. But how dare you turn back for me? We went to Hueco Mundo for Inoue!"

Ah, Isshin thinks. Ah hah. He begins to fit the pieces together.

"You shouldn't have come with me," Ichigo says, shaking his head. He can't seem to clear it.

Rukia places both hands against his chest and gives him the hardest push she can muster. Ichigo is so exhausted that it overwhelms him, and he goes stumbling backwards, landing in an ungraceful heap on the ground.

"You bitch! What the hell was that for?!" he demands.

"I went for Inoue," she says hotly. "But I also went because of you! Don't push me out like this, Ichigo, please! I want to be there for you and help you. I want to fight at your side without you waiting for me to fall. Don't you respect me enough for that, at least?"

"_I carried you_!" Ichigo explodes. His reiatsu billows out like a great and terrible storm, white hot and scalding. "I carried you, and you weren't moving. I felt your blood running down my arms and it soaked through my haori. So how the fuck can I _not_ push you away? Everyone who came was hurt because I had to settle a fucking score!"

"That's not true!" Rukia snaps, not backing down. Even Isshin feels slightly afraid of his son in that moment; his reiastu was threatening to blow a hole in Kisuke's ceiling.

"I didn't go just to save Inoue," Ichigo doesn't even sound like himself. "I went to fight—I wanted to kill them all! Do you know what _that_ feels like? I wasn't even in control of my body anymore. They told me you were dead, and all I wanted to do was rip someone's throat out!"

"Hueco Mundo was affecting your hollow," Rukia says calmly. "That person wasn't you."

"But what if it was?" Ichigo still has yet to pull himself from the ground. "I feel… I feel like… I don't even know who I am, anymore... I was more of a monster than all of the arrancar."

"Where is this coming from?" Rukia asks, horrified. "I know you, Ichigo. You may be an idiot sometimes, but you're also good and brave. You're the kindest person I know."

He shakes his head in disgust. "You only say that because you haven't seen me…"

"With your mask, you mean?" The coolness in her voice is there. "What does that matter when I've seen the man beneath it?"

Isshin closes his eyes and waits.

There is a long silence before Ichigo speaks again.

"I just want to protect you…" he says quietly. "So why is it that you're always protecting me? Ever since the day we met."

"Because, you idiot," she says affectionately. She is helping him to stand again. "It's not some kind of task or chore for me to fight when it's for you. How many times do I have to tell you that I care about you?"

They stand there, staring at one another. Speaking, but not communicating. Isshin thinks that by now, they probably didn't need to.

"Are you going back to Soul Society?" Ichigo whispers. They're standing so near each other, but still not touching.

"I have to," Rukia says. "I promised Renji. I won't let him take the punishment alone."

Ichigo makes a strangled noise at the back of his throat. "Can't you just come home for tonight, at least?"

"I'm sorry," she says. Her hand comes up to rest on his arm.

"What if they don't let you come back?" he says. "What then?"

Rukia smiles, and Isshin can see why Ichigo loves her so much.

"Well," she says. "I suppose you'll just have to come and get me again."

"What about Renji?"

"I'm sure you'll stomp around and be obnoxious enough to get him released, too."

Isshin chuckles lightly, but turns back away into the darkness. Rukia hesitates a moment before leaving, waiting for something that Ichigo, a not-so-normal-and-yet-so-typical teenage boy, didn't realize he needed to give.

Maybe Daddy would need to have a talk with him about that, too.

But for now, Isshin waits outside on the steps for his son to appear. This isn't how he pictured telling him, but with the Winter War coming, and the post-Rukia depression that is sure to settle in by the next morning, now seems as good a time as any.

Rukia could teach his son many things, Isshin knows. And she could tend his wounds, carry his weight, and soothe him in a way that no woman had been able to since Masaki. But it was his turn now. Time to account for the shadows, and time for all revelations. He doesn't want him to have to go back to those other kids, the ones that Kisuke had told him about. _He_ wants to help _his_ son.

Kurosaki Isshin is a mask that he wears now, made of fake skin instead of unholy bone. It is the mask he made for himself when Masaki stripped away the other. More than anything, he wants his son to know that there is someone else in the world who holds a faith in him that is unwavering and pure. Someone who knows, really knows, what it feels like. For the first time, Isshin feels as though he is brave enough to be the father he was always meant to be.

Ichigo is so much stronger than he is, but it doesn't take away Isshin's need to protect him.

The night air is cool, but the sky is clear. Isshin steps out from where he has been hiding and waits. He thinks of Masaki, his beautiful wife, and wonders what she would say.

Ichigo comes out and shuts the door behind him. He is about to take off down the road when he sees his father waiting for him. He's aged again, Isshin thinks, though he looks no older. 

His son's eyes are as wide as the moon above him.

"Hey, kid," Isshin says. Ichigo closes his eyes and shakes his head, believing it and not believing it all at once. Isshin knows how good he looks in his uniform.

"What are you doing here?" he asks his father.

"I'm here for you."

Isshin holds out his arm, and Ichigo walks toward him with a look of real need and desperation on his face. Isshin doesn't say another word, he simply clasps his son around his shoulders tightly, and they begin to walk home.

_… This thing of darkness I  
acknowledge mine. _

The Tempest (V, i, 275-276) 


End file.
